What Hansen’s Disease Sufferers’ Art Connotes

This is an essay about Hansen’s disease sufferers’ arts and how they became the main parts of contemporary art exhibitions. Hansen’s disease has been provoked fear and discrimination among people in every part of the world in the history because of its physical damage to the sufferers. In Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, visiting sanatoriums, I could meet the traces of inhumane discriminations against them. While visiting them, I could see that the patients deprived of basic human rights such as having and raising their own child or being with parents sublimate the repressed feelings such as missing and wishes into art expressions. Their arts gave me a strong impression and made me contemplate on the origin of artistic impulse. At the exhibition 〈ATTITIDE 2007〉 held in Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, I placed the works of Hansen’s disease in the center surrounded by artworks of the international artists. The display, human expression of our time against art, helps me review on what leading contemporary art should be. It also reminded me of the responsibility of art to the society. I believe that contemporary art should look back upon the past and draw our attention to the expressions of human beings who were neglected in the society while keep thinking of the comtemporary world. I hope that my essay would help us to think about art and society from a different perspective.